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John Keats Poems

On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer

Much have I traveled in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo[1] hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;[2]

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene[3]

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;[4]

Or like stout Cortez[5] when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific – and all his men

Looked at each other with a wild surmise –

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

When I Have Fears

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-piled books, in charact’ry,[6]

Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,

That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the fairy[7] power

Of unreflecting love! – then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

Directions:

Read each question carefully and then respond to each thoughtfully, correctly and completely. Responses are worth two points each.

  1. In “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” what could “realms of gold” (line 1) be?
  1. Keats uses two extended similes to describe how he felt when he read Chapman’s translation of Homer. What are these two similes? What details in these similes suggest that reading Homer was like an act of discovery or exploration?
  1. In “When I Have Fears,” what simile describes the books the speaker hopes to write?
  1. One fear that the speaker of “When I Have Fears” expresses is that he will never be able to write the books he wishes to write. What else does he fear he will never do?
  1. Describe the speaker’s tone in “When I Have Fears.” What is the turn in the poem?

[1] bards in fealty to Apollo: poets in loyal service (as feudal tenants to their lord) to Apollo, the Greek god of poetry

[2] demesne: noun domain

[3] serene: noun archaic for “clear air”

[4] ken: noun range of vision

[5] Cortez: sixteenth-century Spanish explorer. In this now famous mistake, Keats confuses Cortez with Balboa, another Spanish explorer. Balboa was actually the first European to see the eastern shore of the Pacific Ocean from the heights of Darien in Panama.

[6] charact’ry: nout the characters of the alphabet

[7] fairy: adjective supernatural; unearthly